& there’s no taking it back now.
What comes next? Charcoal underbone,

darkroom for soliloquy & irises wide
at home. Some underside party popping

off & ending with me counting resignations
on a couch made from my last pennies—

copper profiles cushion deep, dull
with emancipation & worth almost me.

It ends because the beginning won’t jumpstart
again: red smudge of a mouth, lipstick everywhere

the afterthought a comet leaves on its way
out. What makes this moment unfold like a fine

woman raising herself up from the bathroom floor?
Honky-tonk in the honeyed brown of an eyeball?

We reappeared through

mountains in the North blackened
with distance, blacker even behind
themselves, and obscured even
further with that tokey giant air.

Meaning had fallen off
the words. I peered into

bathroom mirror
through hesitant
steam, wiped away

to expose

an expected face, different.